Ericsson has successfully demonstrated data-transfer speeds of more than 500 megabits per second over copper, the communications company said Monday.

The data-transfer rates were achieved using a version of digital subscriber line (DSL) technology called “vectorized” VDSL2, Ericsson said in a statement. The technology, also called “crosstalk cancellation,” provides the high transmission rates through a twisted pair of copper cables by reducing the noise coming from other pairs in the same cable bundle. VDSL2 has traditionally offered speeds of around 100Mbps.

I will be happy if my DSL line give me 512K, I am even afraid to upgrade and lose it all 🙁

Mr. Latif Ladid, the president of IPv6 Forum, left a comment on a previous post on my blog with the latest update on IPv4 exhaustion, only 12% of IPv4 address are left, that is 2% in less than 3 months, the new estimate is 769 days.

This this insightful comment:

The IP address space is down to just 12% with 534 M IP addresses or 32 blocks left. see http://www.potaroo.net/tools/ipv4/index.html
One of the most obvious and easily quantifiable incentives of the move to IPv6 is the growth and the continuity of the Internet and then the run to the bank for the remaining address space as it will be needed to have a secure dual stack transition which is the most secure transition and will be unfortunately the rich man’s transition. All others will tunnel which is not secure making it the poor man’s transition. Even the transition will aggravate the digital divide between the haves and have-nots in terms of security. The IPv6 Forum knew this problem 10 years ago and pushed ISPs to move earlier to manage a secure transition, but it takes patience and passion to make this happen.

I got a DNS failure when I tried to access my website yesterday, I didn’t suspect my ISP because I am using OpenDNS as my name server, so I switched back to SAUDI NET name servers and it worked fine. So I thought it was OpenDNS problem, until I read the news about large-scale DDoS attack on Network Solutions my DNS registrar, where I also host my DNS for rayed.com.

Only 14% of IP addresses are left, which is estimated to be used in 811 days which is around 2 years!!

IPv4 Exhaustion counter

Does that mean the Internet as we know it will stop growing? yes exactly, if we ran out of IP addresses you can not connect your new game console, phone, notebook, etc… to the Internet.

Scientists has found many solutions to delay this problem, including “classless network”, and NAT, which allowed us to use the IP address space more efficiently.

The solution: IPv6

IPv6 solve many problems with the current standard IPv4, the most important one is IP address exhaustion, it has been their since 1996, and it has address space enough to give an IP address to every centimeter on earth.

The world wide adoption of IPv6 isn’t fast enough. With only 2 years to total IP address exhaustion, we should start moving now, and fast as we can.

Most network devices and operating systems already support IPv6, but unfortunately not many Internet provider support IPv6 connectivity.

In Saudi Arabia, no data provider including STC, Bayanat, ITC, nor any other service provider provide IPv6 service, I am not even sure if they have any plan to do it.

So what can we do, call them and ask about it, send them emails, blog about it, Saudi Arabia Internet usage is booming and IPv6 could be the only way to ensure it growth.